I’ve written many times about how much my company has grown as a result of my attendance at Affiliate Summit. A few months ago I alluded to an opportunity that came out of Affiliate Summit East 2012 that I was hoping would come to fruition soon. I’m excited to finally be able to talk about it.

I’ve been running Sunshine Rewards for almost 7 years and am always looking for new ideas to take it in different directions or reach new audiences. When Carrie Rocha from Pocket Your Dollars asked if we could chat after breakfast one morning in New York about a possible partnership, I was intrigued. I’ve always admired the way that she runs her site and her no-nonsense approach to helping people save money.

Long story short, after about a 30 minute meeting with Carrie I was emailing my IT guy asking him how long it would take to build a white label version of Sunshine Rewards for bloggers. Knowing that the 4th quarter would soon be upon us, we all jumped into action to turn an idea into a joint venture. We knew that time was not on our side, but we had a very similar vision for launching the first phase of the site.

Less than 2 months after that meeting, Pocket Your Dollars Rewards officially launched. It doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles that we know it will eventually have, but it’s a good test for both of us to see what we can do with it. Carrie has a new value proposition to give her members, and I have new customers for my merchants. Together, Carrie and I can continue to provide the kind of personalized customer service to which our customers are accustomed.

Besides the obvious benefits, the process has helped me view Sunshine Rewards with fresh eyes. Do people really use certain features? How much time do we spend chasing missing credits? How can we streamline our processes and make our site more inviting? These are things I should have been considering all along but never seemed to be a priority.

I’m incredibly excited about this new venture and seeing how it can help both of our sites grow. I’m sure that there is much for us to learn from each other. If the success of my other joint venture that grew out of Affiliate Summit (Wine Club Group) is any indication, it is going to be a terrific Q4!